APPENDIX A-2
Vision Statement for Financial Management

Ensuring that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) establishes and meets financial management goals and objectives and that the agency is in compliance with financial management legislation and directives.

GOALS AND STRATEGIES

As part of the agency's overall, long-term goal of modernizing and integrating information systems, the agency will replace its current accounting system. The new single, integrated financial management system will incorporate all existing financial and resource management information system requirements. The system meets the requirements for financial management systems contained in the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program directives and OMB Circular A-127. The system supports compliance with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. The system satisfies the goals of the National Performance Review for moving towards electronic methods of acquisition. The system will capitalize on the opportunities for business process improvements to resolve systemic and procedural issues. Additionally, the new system will:

• standardize, integrate, and speed-up financial processes via automation, including budgeting, procurement, accounting, resource management, and financial reporting;
• establish, monitor, and maintain control over federal funds;
• facilitate more effective management, analyses, and projections for planning purposes;
• improve customer service and support of goods, supplies and services for the agency; and
• improve the speed and reliability of communicating financial information throughout the agency and to external agencies, organizations, and citizens.

Timely, accurate, and reliable financial management information is essential to the successful and efficient management of the agency programs. Lack of access to critical financial management information places tremendous limitations on managers: managers cannot effectively respond to new demands for allocating resources to improve the efficiency of agency operations; neither can they respond to Congressional inquiries, nor fulfill many existing legislative and regulatory requirements; funds control is hampered; and cost accounting is not possible. The agency has a comprehensive financial system replacement plan to meet the demands for a single source of financial information delivered to management and staff in a timely and accurate manner.

BASELINE FINANCIAL SYSTEM STRUCTURE

The Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), ICF Consulting Financial Assistant (FINASST), became the Commission's core financial system on October 1, 1998. The new core system replaced a mainframe-based, non-Year 2000 compliant, batch processing system that was developed in FY1979. As the agency's official system of record, FINASST directly impacts the agency's ability to effectively track and monitor EEOC's budget and resource expenditures against program measures and goals. In FY 2000, the vendor for FINASST informed EEOC that they were selling their financial services division, including the FINASST product. The new vendor has announced they will end support for FINASST September 30, 2001.

TARGET FINANCIAL SYSTEM STRUCTURE

In FY 2000, the agency contracted with an independent accounting firm to conduct an evaluation of Federal accounting system alternatives. The objective of this contract was to assess the feasibility and availability of cross-servicing of the agency's financial management functions. The agency has reviewed the alternatives for financial system services and selected a cross-servicing relationship with the Department of the Interior's National Business Center. The cross-servicing inter-agency agreement provides the full suite of the Federal Financial System commercial off-the-shelf software. The project commenced in January 2001. The conversion and migration components include data quality review and cleanup tasks on master tables and open documents. The system will be operational October 1, 2001 for FY2002. The agency will discontinue use of the FINASST and several manual processes and procedures after closing out FY2001 financial records.

By 2003, EEOC will have a single, integrated financial management system. The integrated system will provide a single authoritative source of relevant and reliable financial information, eliminate redundant systems and data, and facilitate the elimination of ad hoc records and systems. The system will enable financial and program managers to track cost data for performance against approved spending plans, compare the cost of program elements within and across programs, and base decisions on sound financial and performance criteria. In addition, managers will be able to exercise better funds controls, improve their reconciliation capability, streamline their organizations and redirect resources toward more productive activities. In essence, implementation of the integrated system will better enable the agency to carry out its mission and serve its customers by determining how best to allocate resources.

PROJECTS AND TASKS REQUIRED TO MOVE FROM BASELINE TO TARGET

This page was last modified on May 3, 2001.

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